Walking Man's Road
by WolfBane2
Summary: Everything changes, and yet the two remaining immortals always stay the same. Even fallen angels grow weary of endless repitition. One-shot, potential KradDark yaoi, up to your tastes.


Author's Note: WolfBane2 does not own DNAngel. WolfBane2 does not own the song "Man's Road" which is from the movie The Last Unicorn and is performed by the band America. WolfBane2 thinks disclaimers are vaguely pointless, but WolfBane2 also does not want to be sued. WolfBane2 talks in third person too much.

_Horizon rising up to meet the purple dawn  
_

The moon's radiance spread over one of the many cities below it, singing defiance towards the artificial lights that clawed at the ebony night skies with silent snarls, trying desperately to drown out the luminance that shown from the stars above. Somewhere in the suburbs, a stray dog with tattered ears sat on its haunches for a moment and howled up at the golden sphere that was the moon, before continuing on its lonesome path. On the outskirts of the city, bats swooped low above the dying grass and snatched insects from the air, their final dying squeals going unheard as the mammal's small, fierce fangs skewered through their bodies. At one end of the city, a bored 16-year-old boy lay on his stomach on the roof of his home and gazed at the skies, trying to pick out the constellations from the few stars that glowed vigorously enough to penetrate the fog created by the city lights. At the other end, a boy of the same age took a long drag of smoke from a marijuana joint, and bitterly remembered better times, times before he knew the scent of gun powder and the crimson splash of a sibling's blood.

Far above the cities, out of the reach of artificial lights, hovered a figure. The figure's wings flapped to keep their owner above the layer of pearly-gray clouds that kept him from mortal eyes. He did not need to be below them; his own golden eyes were sufficient in power to peer through the misty clouds to see the city and its inhabitants. A long, out-of-place lock of golden hair that trailed down his face was the only thing that obscured his vision, and this was not anywhere approaching enough to keep the figure from witnessing, with vague distaste, the affairs of the dwellings below him.

_Dust demon screaming, bring an eagle to lead me on_

The golden-eyed figure watched a sleeping human in her small apartment, seeing the shadows of dreams scurry over her face. He had seen enough. White feathers waxed the color ivory as moonbeams bounced off them; the figure's wings tilted in a different direction and flapped more vigorously to gain altitude. Thermals, warm updrafts of air that enabled those with wings to gain height with effort, existed rarely during the night. Flying after the sun went down meant more work for the flier, but the man took little notice of this fact. Moonlight was escape; a softer relief from the glaring sunlight that dominated most of the daily hours.

As his tamer slept, Krad often took control of the shared body and flew during the night, gliding above the clouds until morning to ease the unnamable ache that he bore inside his chest. Swifter than rain, swift as loss, racing to catch up with the brief time when he had known nothing at all but the sweetness of being himself. Often then, between the rush of one breath and the reach of another, it came to Krad that Daisuke and Satoshi were long dead, and the rest of the Hikaris as well, and humanity met and mastered. So long ago that the grandchildren of the stars that had kept him company during the long earthly nights were withering now, turning from sources of light to black holes, the symbols of eternity's void and that he was still the only light angel left in the world.

_For in my heart I carry such a heavy load_

The strange, bitter being's feet came to rest on a ledge, far away from the ears of any mortal. With no other choice, he continued to wait for a dawn that, for the two true fallen angels left on the Earth, would never fully come to being.

_Here I am on Man's road, walking Man's road, walking Man's road_

"Man that was close," a young man laughed quietly, sliding the ribbon of a pendant called the Sphinx's Eye over his long, dark hair that exploded in seemingly random directions. The charm came to rest below his collarbone, the frayed ends of its crimson ribbon standing out rather sinisterly from his black shirt.

He spoke to no one in particular, for his tamer had long since fallen asleep. This particular mission had required a two-hour wait before the Phantom Thief could make a safe bid for the desired object, seeing as the information that Niwa's mother had given her son on the police prior to the mission had proved to be incorrect, and the museum guards really switched places two hours after she claimed they did. Daisuke, already exhausted from the previous night's lack of sleep due to nightmares he refused to let Dark see the memories of, had faded into unconsciousness after the first half-hour. Dark did not really mind; the human probably would have given him a hard time about the fact that the thief was still forced to rather severely knock out three of the guards. But he did mind the lack of company. Being by nature a talkative spirit, Dark preferred to have someone to talk to on the flights back to Daisuke's dwelling. Wiz was all well and good, but it's rather hard to try to have a meaningful conversation, or really any conversation at all, with a small rabbit-like creature who has a five-word vocabulary at most and was acting as your set of wings at the time was relatively not worth the trouble.

_I'm hungry, weary, but I cannot lay me down_

As the flapping set of ebony wings carried Dark over the city, he peered down at the varying few who still wandered the streets, even in the dead of night. Those with violent intentions lurked in the shadows and pounced out on those helpless stragglers who had been caught outside when they should have been taking safety in their homes. The thief was not overly disturbed as he watched the crimes being committed. He understood that no matter where you went in the world, it was a jungle. Even in the cities and towns, predators still prowled through the streets, hunting whatever wasn't smart enough or fast enough to get away. He shook his head, brushing a hand through his long black hair. Life was tough, and you had to be tough to survive. Whatever human had coined the term, "survival of the fittest" was wiser than they could have known. A wicked grin twisted the edges of Dark's lips. And there could be no doubt in his mind that he was the fittest.

Or one of the fittest, anyway.

Suddenly, a flash of white appeared in the corner of his eye, ghostly against the endless darkness of the night sky's horizon. He blinked, and the flash was gone. Anyone else would have dismissed it as a coincidence, a trick of the mind. But Dark, in his many generations of thievery, had learned that there were no coincidences. He locked his fierce violet gaze on the place where the brief ivory had appeared, memorizing the general direction of the location. "Wiz!" the Phantom Thief barked, shattering the silence that before had only been permeated by the soft whoosh of wind through feathers. "Take me down there. I want to check something out."

There was no verbal answer, but instantly the set of black-feathered wings upon his back inclined, and Dark was swiftly gliding to the cracked sidewalk below him. The soles of his shoes scraped the sidewalk within several seconds, and he separated himself from the ebony wings. Instantly, they vanished and were replaced by a small, furry animal with enormous red eyes. "Kyuu?" it questioned anxiously, peering up at him.

The Phantom Thief took a moment to gauge his surroundings. They were on the sidewalk beside a construction site that had originally been creating the building for a mechanic's business, but had been abandoned in mid-production out of lack of funds. Now it was home only to rats and rusting metal, with a driveway that led to nowhere and wooden boards that jutted out of the grassless earth that was muddy from the previous night's rainfall. The place where he had spotted the figure was only about a half-mile away, an easy distance to cover, and Daisuke's house was only several blocks away from this construction site. In theory, he'd be able to cover both half-miles and check out the mysteriously blink of ivory in plenty of time to get his tamer back to the house before dawn. Provided nothing went wrong.

Things seemed to go wrong fairly often.

_The rain comes, dreary, but there's no shelter I have found_

He shrugged, and smiled. Why not? He had nothing better to do, and Daisuke would hopefully never know. Dark knelt down and stroked Wiz's ears affectionately. The dark angel told the tiny creature, "Don't worry. You head home. I'll be back in plenty of time, the boss won't be mad. Go on." Wiz regarded him worriedly for several more seconds, but eventually it turned and began to bound off in the direction of Daisuke's dwelling. Dark watched as the shadows swallowed the small animal. He wasn't worried; he knew that Wiz, despite his general tendency to wander, was smart enough to get home quickly and safely to avoid the wrath of Daisuke's mother.

Without any hesitation of his own, the Phantom Thief turned in the opposite direction and began to make his way swiftly to the strange place where he had sighted something that should not have been there. He ran not in the clumsy, huffing manner of a human, but as the wolf runs; effortless and silent, an easy but swift lope that he could keep up for fifty miles if necessary. Within five minutes, the half-mile had been navigated. Dark's breath had barely even been accelerated.

The site was a marshy area of land, where land and sea combined for a bit, before fading out into complete ocean. There were no sandy beaches; only wet, swampy land that was inhabited by crickets and amphibians. A few houses were scattered here and there, but the land was unstable, a difficult building site. For the most part, it had been left to the seagulls. Only telephone poles marked it visibly, the tall structures rising almost comically out of the muck.

_It will be a long time till I find my abode_

Dark scanned the area, searching for whatever it was that he had glimpsed so briefly. Not for one second did he consider that his mind had played a trick on him. His mind, made crafty from countless thefts and wily as a fox's from constant escapes of persecution, was far more reliable than any mortal's. Krad was not the only being that had hunted him over the centuries. He'd been chased by everything from government agents to raging medieval mobs, and seldom been captured. Even when captured, the dark angel had managed to slip out of his captors' grip, always. One did not acquire this ability without gaining knowledge along the way. So much knowledge, so much of the burden that humanity whined about even when they knew nothing themselves.

And yet to stop seeking this knowledge was out of the question for Dark. To stop searching, searching endlessly for something unidentifiable that he could not find and perhaps never would? Not an option. For better or worse, this was the way. This had always been the way. The darkness, and therefore Dark as well, was old as the sky, old as the Moon. What else was there to continue existing for if not the knowledge, the hunt for something he desperately wanted and could never find?

As the Phantom Thief realized instantly what had become of the flash of white, another voice spoke. "Yes," it said. There was wistfulness in the voice, the wistfulness of a hungry wolf that gazed upon prey that it would like to eat, but was not allowed to. "The knowledge is a burden."

_Here I am on Man's road, walking Man's road  
_

Dark spun to face his other self, who stood several yards away on another patch of dry land on the edge of the marsh, facing the open sea before them that was lapping gently at the shore, the water dimpled with shadows. "Krad!" the dark angel snarled, instantly shifting his weight to balance equally on both feet, so that he could push off his own dry piece of land in either direction and flee at the first sign of danger. "Why are you here?" The Sphinx's Eye still hung around the thief's neck, its ruby center gleaming in the reflected moonlight that bounced off the water's murky surface.

Either the icy light angel did not hear Dark's question, which Dark much doubted, or he simply chose to thoroughly ignore it. "I hate you, Dark Mousy," Krad growled matter-of-factly. But the growl sounded worn-out; it lacked its usual ferocity.

_Moon rising, disguising lonely streets in bright displays _

Dark, suspicious because his other self had not yet tried to blast his head off his shoulders with an energy ball, pondered what to say for a couple seconds. Still ready to fight at a moment's notice, he responded with a sly note in his tone, "I'm thrilled to see you too. Do you have anything important to say or should I just start kicking your ass right now?"

Krad stated flatly. "You wish." He turned his gaze back to the ocean. Becoming annoyed but also slightly confused, Dark risked a glance towards where the light angel looked with such a faraway gaze. He didn't see anything of relevance, and decided he might as well leave while the exit was clear, before Krad set off whatever trap he doubtlessly had lain for his counterpart. Just as the dark angel's leg muscles tensed to spring away into the shadows towards Daisuke's house, Krad spoke again. "I grow weary of human beings."

Dark looked back towards him, doubtful. "What?" It was not an I-Didn't-Hear-You what. It was an I-Heard-You-But-I-Don't-Have-A-Clue-What-You-Meant-By-It what.

"Don't give me that. You know exactly what I mean," the icy immortal snapped irritably. The faraway quality in his eyes was gone, replaced by the usual fierce, bitter look. But as he gazed out onto the ocean, that same strange wistfulness still remained in his gaze, almost invisible as it was entangled with the thirst of vengeance. Almost a weariness. "Bending under the heaviness of knowing their names, always moving to find some cure for the ache, but never finding what you seek. You know it as well as I do, Dark Mousy."

_The stars fade, the night shade falls and makes the world afraid_

Dark narrowed one eye, still unsure what his counterpart was planning, but he neither ran nor sprang for Krad's throat; a signal for the icy being to elaborate. Krad continued, "We're immortal, you and I. We've each haunted a specific human family for centuries now. Even when we die, we simply move onto the next host. It is never finished."

"And?" Despite himself, the light angel had Dark's attention, for the moment. Though still prepared to spring away at the first hostile movement, the snarl had gone out of the dark angel's voice, replaced by that same insatiable curiosity he had always been plagued with.

"Don't you tire of it? We've both been here for so long. Everything else changes, and we stay the same. Endless repetition, century after century…and all for what?"

Dark surprised himself as an answer came from between his lips, definite and sure. "We've always been here. It's never been different. That's the way."

_It waits in silence for the sky to explode_

Krad turned his eyes to his other side's still-wary violet gaze. The hatred had retreated into their depths, replaced by the fatigue that had collected in both their hearts over the eons. It reminded Dark of a tiger he had seen in an American traveling circus, sixty years ago through the eyes of yet another host who had traveled there for several years. The beautiful, deadly animal had been confined to a metal-barred cage lined with dirty straw. To make sure the crowd got their money's worth, it had been poked with a long iron prod whenever it was on display until it rose wearily to stalk around the cage. It paced back and forth along the metal caging, tail lashing, but had long given up on trying to get out of the cage. The hatred had still gleamed at the backs of its gold-and-black eyes for those who kept it captive, but the hatred was covered by an unceasing hopelessness. Even so, it still remembered. Even if it had lost hope, it still remembered when things had not been that way.

Except for these two beings, there could be no remembering. Because things had ALWAYS been that way, to either extent of their knowledge. Light and Darkness must fight, and yet neither can win. They must attempt to banish the other, and yet one must always accompany the other. There can be no light with a shadow, no shade without the sun to distinguish it from the rest of the ground.

_Here I am on Man's road, walking Man's road, walking Man's road_

"Yes," the gold-haired immortal spat bitterly. "That's the way. That's always been the way." As Dark watched with both astonishment and vague amusement, Krad paced a step or two just like the tiger, hatred blazing in his eyes like smoldering moonfire. But then he stopped, and seemed to regain his composure. "Will it ever end?" he asked in a slightly milder tone, the hatred fading again into that bizarre weariness.

Dark admitted, "Don't know." Krad regarded him for a few more minutes, face devoid of any expression at all. Dark looked back just as blankly. And yet the air was filled with an unarguable sadness. Energy began to crackle in Krad's fist, insinuating that they should delay the night's inevitable fight no longer. Dark looked out onto the rippling ocean, where Krad had been gazing when the dark angel first arrived. "But yes. I am also weary."

The lightning in Krad's hand vanished as suddenly as a lamp when the electrical cord was pulled from its socket. Krad glanced at his counterpart with pure confusion. Confusion of what, neither knew. Without another word exchanged, the light angel turned his back and flew upwards until the sheer dark fortitude of the night sky hid even his luminous white wings. Dark did not attempt to strike his counterpart in the back. No deadly magic struck towards Dark out of the sky.

Dark turned away from the direction Krad has vanished in, sprang into a slow and effortless run, and began to glide toward his tamer's dwelling. And wondered.

_Walking Man's road, walking Man's road, walking Man's road_

Author's Note: That's the end. Yeah, I know it was weird and had no plot. But I liked it anyways. I needed a break from writing Moonfire (don't worry FB fans, I haven't given up on it). Krad's one of my favorites, even if he is a homicidal blonde…no, wait, maybe it's BECAUSE he's a homicidal blonde like K-san from Gravitation…eh who cares, I like him and that's what's important. You can consider this yaoi if you like, or you can consider it not-yaoi.. Although I adore Dark/Kard fiction, either way, it matters little for this fic. Please review.


End file.
